Progress pics

I thought I'd better post some photos. This is the Swallowtail shawl as of today. The BFL handspun is lovely and soft and I'm really enjoying knitting with it. The lace pattern isn't disappearing too badly among the colour changes. This section of the pattern is easily memorised, so it goes quite quickly even though the rows are quickly getting longer.

The sock has enough done to warrant a photo now. It's my variation of the Charade sock. The original uses a 2 by 2 rib as the basis, I've used a 4 by 2 rib so that the herringbone pattern is more spaced out. I'm toying with the idea of doing a short row heel for a change, no decision needed yet though. The yarn is Swiss, I'll post the details when I find the label. I'm using my 2.5mm Addi lace needle, magic loop with 72sts cast on. In my efforts to expand my skills, I tried the Old Norwegian cast on using a 3.25mm dpn for this sock, transferring the stitches to the circular before knitting the first round.

On a totally unrelated note, one of my other non yarn hobbies is doing jigsaws and today I finished a 1500 piece puzzle. I had bought it about a year ago from eBay and was most disappointed to discover it had missing pieces. I accept this as a hazard of buying used puzzles, but the number of missing pieces took my breath away when I counted up the empty spaces.

~Would you believe 18?